Part 149

She knew.... Her face was rigid, a pure white mask of ivory; there was not a trace of colour even in the set lips. Her eyes burned upon him, twin flames of dark amber, steady under levelled brows. She was wrapped in a long ermine-caped and bordered black brocade mantle, that gleamed with jet passementerie; a scarf of white lace covered her head. It hid the red-brown hair with the Clytie ripple in it, and the great silken coils, transfixed by a sapphire and diamond dagger, that were massed at the nape of the slender neck. Seen so, she was nunlike in her chaste severity, but for those stern, resentful eyes.

"I have come to tell you that I am no longer in ignorance. I have found out what you have hidden from me so long--what the Wrynches knew and would not tell me; what the world has known while I sat in the dark...."

A spasm wrung her mouth. Saxham rolled a chair towards her. He said guardedly, avoiding her eyes:

"Until you acquaint me in detail with what you have heard, I cannot explain or defend myself. Will you not sit down? You are looking pale and overwrought."

She laid one slight gloved hand upon the chair-back, and leaned upon it.

"I would rather stand, if you have no objection, whilst I tell you what I have learned to-night. I dined alone with Lady Hannah at the Carlton; we went together to the theatre--Major Wrynche had had a summons to attend at Marlborough House."

She untied the knot of lace beneath her chin, and stripped away the long gloves with nervous haste and impatience, and tossed them with the scarf upon the chair beside her, and went on:

"I had heard much of 'The Chiffon Girl.' I wanted to see it. When the First Act began I wondered very much why they called it a Musical Comedy, when the noise the orchestra made could hardly be called music; and there was no comedy--only slang expressions and stupid jokes. But the actress who sang and danced in the principal part ... Miss Lavigne ..." She had loosened her mantle; now she let it drop upon the Eastern carpet, emerging from its blackness as a slender, supple, upright shape in clinging, creamy-white draperies; her exquisite arms bare to the shoulder, and clasped midway by heavy, twisted bracelets of barbaric gold, her nymph-like bosom swelling from the folded draperies of the low-cut bodice like a twin-budded narcissus flowering from the pale calyx, her sweet throat clasped about with Saxham's gift of pearls.

"She could not sing, though the people applauded and encored her"--there was a gleam of disdain in the golden eyes--"but she was very pretty ... she danced with wonderful grace and lightness ... it was like a swallow dipping and darting over the shallows of the river-shore--like a branch of red pomegranate-blossoms swayed and swung by a spring breeze.... I admired her, and yet I was sorry for her.... To have to pose and bound and whirl before all those rows and rows of staring faces night after night!..."

Saxham did not smile. But a muscle twitched in his cheek as he said:

"She would hardly thank you for pitying her."

"She would be right to resent my pity!" Lynette burst out with sudden vehemence. "She has been injured, and I was the cause! Oh! how could you be so cruel as to let me go on loving him? Was it kind? Was it fair to yourself and me?"

Saxham's square, pale face was perfectly expressionless. He waited in silence to hear the rest.

"You know of whom I speak ..." said Lynette. "He was gay and beautiful and winning--not chivalrous, as I believed him; not honest, or sincere, or true. Months before we met at Gueldersdorp he was the husband of this actress--the woman I saw upon the stage to-night. And you knew all this, and never told me! You knew that his memory was sacred in my heart. A woman I was introduced to here in London once tried to blacken it. She said she wished to act towards me as a friend. I remember that I laughed in her face as I turned and left her. 'You thought to make me hate him,' I said. 'You have failed miserably. If it were possible to love him better--if I could honour his memory more than I do now, I would, because of the evil you have spoken of my dead!'"

She heard Saxham draw breath heavily. She went on with increased passion, and gathering resentment:

"All my life long I might have gone on in my blindness, honouring the dishonourable, cherishing the base, but for the idle gossip of two strangers in the theatre to-night--a man and a woman in the stalls behind us. They talked all the louder when the lights went down. They wondered 'why the Lavigne did not star on the programme as a Viscountess?' but, of course, they said, 'the Foltlebarres would never stand that! They were nearly wild when that handsome scamp of theirs married her--poor Beauty Beauvayse, of the Grey Hussars.' He and she had kept house together; there was a kiddie coming; they said the little woman played her cards uncommonly well!... The marriage was pulled off on the quiet at a Registrar's a week or so before Beau got his appointment on the Staff. Straight of the fellow, but afterwards, at Gueldersdorp, didn't he kick over the matrimonial pole? Somebody had seen his engagement to a Miss Something-or-other announced in a Siege newspaper, published the very day he got killed.... Poor beggar! Rough on him, and rough on the Foltlebarres, and a facer for Lessie ... and what price the girl?' And I was the girl!... It was of me they were talking!..."

Her lips writhed back from her white teeth. She winced and shuddered. "Oh! can't you see me sitting and listening, and every word vitriol, burning to the bone?"

"Why did you remain," said Saxham, wrung by pity, "to be tortured by such prurient prattlers? Why did you not get up and leave the place?"

"I could not move," she said.... "I could only sit and listen. Then the First Act ended, and the lights went up, and Lady Hannah touched my arm. I knew when our eyes met that she had heard as I had. She got up, saying, 'I think we have had enough of this?' and then we came away."

She caught her breath and bit her underlip, and he saw her eyes grow misty.

"She sent a Commissionaire to call a hansom.... She took my hand as we stood waiting in the empty vestibule. She said: 'Those chattering pies behind us have saved me some bad half-hours! Your husband, for some reason of his own, has never told you. And it has more than once occurred to me that if I were the true friend I want to be to both of you, I'd have proved it before now by telling you myself. But I've learned to be doubtful of my own inspirations!...' I asked her then if all they had said was true? She shrugged her shoulders and nodded: 'Pour tout dire, they let Beau down rather gently.... But if he never could tell the truth to a woman, he never went back on a man; and, after all, these things run in the blood. Passons l'éponge là-dessus. Forget him, and thank your good Angel you're married to an honourable man!'"

Saxham's eyes were on the carpet. He did not raise them or move a muscle of his face.

"She told me to forget him. It is easier to forgive him; there are deceits that smirch the soul of the deceived no less than the deceiver. He lied to the Mother--that I cannot pardon! Perhaps some day--but I do not know. Lady Hannah called you honourable.... I needed no one to tell me what you are and have always been! You hide the things that other men boast of.... You are loyal even to those you scorn. You kept his secret. I have reproached you to-night for keeping it, even while I honoured you in my heart!"

"Do not honour me," said Saxham harshly, "for behaving with common decency! Can a man tell tales on another who is dead? To commit murder would be a crime less cowardly. I do myself mere justice when I say that I am incapable of an act so vile! Nor would I blacken a living man to make myself show whiter in any man's--or woman's eyes!"

She was no longer pale. A lovely colour flushed her, and her eyes were wistful and very kind. Her draperies rustled as she moved towards him. "Owen ..." she said, and her white hands were held out to him, and her sweet mouth quivered, and her voice was a sigh, "I am alive at last to your infinite generosity. I beg you to forgive me for being blind before!"

"Generosity," said Saxham, "does not enter into the question. My silence has no merits whatever. What good could I have gained by telling you?" He lifted his eyes, and met hers full, dropping the words coldly one by one. "The advantage one has ceased to desire can hardly be called gain, in any sense of the word. And--I have left off crying for the moon. Even were you willing to give it me, I have ceased to wish for your love!"

She looked at him with piteous, incredulous wistfulness, as he told the hardy lie. His mask of a face revealed nothing, but he could not disguise the rage of hunger for her that ravened in his famished eyes. They were upon her lips, her throat, the lovely curves of her young bosom even as he spoke; she felt them as the kisses of a fierce, possessive mouth, and glowed with sudden shame, and something more. He saw her beauty change from the pale rose to the fire-hearted crimson, tore away his eyes, and mastered himself. He stepped back, and the still out-stretched, quivering hands dropped nervelessly at her sides.

"You have asked me to pardon you," he said, "for some fancied lack of perception. It is I who owe an apology to you. Try and forgive me for having married you.... I should have known from the first that no good or happiness could ever come of a contract like ours."